13 Songs

13 Songs comprises Fugazi’s first two EPs: 1988's Fugazi and 1989's Margin Walker, recorded within six months of each other. Fugazi embodied a total rejection of classic rock pretension and excess and demanded an intense, immediate connection with its audience. For inspiration the band looked beyond its punk roots and adapted the furiously tough rhythms of American funk and Jamaican reggae. Among the results were “Waiting Room” and “Suggestion”: immense rock anthems that retained the explosive oratory of Ian MacKaye’s previous band, Minor Threat, while incorporating the elastic dynamics of African-American music. Fugazi’s songs stand alone within the realm of indie rock, although the band's self-fashioned form of post-punk music at times displays inadvertent similarities to The Minutemen (“Margin Walker”) and The Happy Mondays (“And the Same”). Metallic, impassioned, and danceable, 13 Songs brings together musical elements that were once thought to be mutually exclusive. These early releases show that in its own way, Fugazi was an archetypal guitar rock band.